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It’s time to get rid of the Facebook “news feed,” because it’s not news

"Facebook's highly personalized algorithmic curation of its users' newsfeeds falls in a legal gray area with respect to CDA 230. As you know, CDA 230 provides immunity for "interactive computer services," drawing a line between that category and "information content providers." But it's not entirely clear when the former becomes the latter; in other words, it's not clear when an intermediary engages in enough editing of third-party content that it becomes an "information content provider" and loses CDA 230 immunity. So the question becomes: does the editing that Facebook is doing here—editing what information is displayed in a users' newsfeed through algorithmic curation —transform Facebook into an "information content provider" for the purposes of the law? Lawyers would argue that one either way."